


Cards on the Table

by literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Bisexual Female Character, Butch Character, F/F, Intersex, Lesbian Character, Original Character-centric, POV Original Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-16 05:02:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16078979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte/pseuds/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte
Summary: A man severely underestimates two women and gets stabbed for it.This is my piece for the @wastelandwanderers zine on tumblr. The idea behind this was: what would happen if my three couriers were in a room together? That turned into: how did they get there in the first place? And here's the result.





	Cards on the Table

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for: usual New Vegas things like alcohol, mentions of slavery, cannibalism, etc, and also references to unnecessary medical intervention on an intersex child, not in detail but potentially upsetting nonetheless.

_ACT I_

Marah cracks broc seeds under her teeth and rubs the strong flavor over the roof of her mouth, covering the smell of alcohol. She chews the broc flower itself the way her mothers made cornmeal, slowly and leisurely. They would sit in the shade of juniper trees and grind their blunt pestles into their stone bowls, laughing, smiling, while she braided their hair. To be a child again, to rest on the sun-warm earth and watch the clouds, to fall asleep with the sounds of the creek murmuring nearby and the wind coming from the mountains to the east - she needs to remember. Marah, the daughter of flaming torches, cannot forget her mothers.

The gecko pelt around her shoulders pinches the wisps of hair at the back of her neck. The dirt crunches under her yucca fiber sandals. Across the street, a drunken local whistles at her, and a child-shaped shadow, knife in his little hand, watches her from the alleyway. It is hard to imagine she walks under the same moon her mothers died under. But it is, it was, it always will be. How does one forgive the dead, let alone the living?

Marah was raised as a hunter until the summer where boys turned into men. She, alone, bled. Then she learned of the choice that the midwives - fathers were never involved after their part was done - had made at her birth. So young, she was taken into the cave of wellness. Hunter became healer, before she could understand what either meant. On nights like these, she finds herself in the cave again, listening to the droplets of water _plink-plinking_ from the stalactites and the Legion slaughtering everyone who loved and hurt her.

The doors to the old Mormon fort give an arthritic groan like an old woman rising from her chair. The courtyard is mostly empty, except for the guards playing caravan with an NCR soldier. There’s been more of them around since the King ceased hostilities. They tip their hats at her and she nods at them.

“You hear about Nelson?” says one of the guards.

The soldier leans forward. “What about it? What’ve you heard?”

“Apparently it's a ghost town. Legion took over, wiped out the nearby camp, and just abandoned it. Did you know anyone stationed there?”

A man is waiting in her tent. She’s never seen him around Freeside before, but strangers tend to come and go at the fort, especially the gamblers. He looks like a Vegas type, with polished shoes and a finely groomed mustache. The wasteland has, apart from his sun-bronzed face, left him untouched. Her eyes are drawn to a mole on the bridge of his nose, and then to his lips, red and firm like congealed blood.

She says in her most professional voice, “Can I help you?”

“Lovely night for a stroll. It's a full moon, isn't it?” He smiles, and she tries not to be charmed. “I know it's quite late, but I won't take much of your time, ma’am.”

“Are you injured?”

“Nothing a bitter drink couldn't cure.”

“We don’t do that kind of business here. Down the street, there's the Atomic Tango -”

“Tell me, how are the Garret twins doing? I didn't know Followers were so good at holding their liquor.”

Sweat pricks along her scalp. “Get out of my tent.”

“Little old lady comes in and drinks them all under the table. I bet they never see it coming.” His laugh is clear as water. “Like the Trojan horse. You just went from one fort to another, didn't you?”

The guards will hear her if she screams, but they could be frumentarii, or he could have simply paid them off. Coin weighs more than morals. She has a knife - no woman walks unarmed at night - but he has a pistol. His hand rests casually on his holster as he waits for her response.

It stings like salt in a wound, how handsome he is.

“What's your name?”

“Frank, ma’am.”

“Listen,” she says. She wishes she was sober, and at the same time, she wants a drink. “Caesar doesn't trust outsiders... not for long. This won't end well for either of us. Frank, you don't have to do this.”

“What? Oh! You think I'm a bounty hunter! I assure you, I'm not here to collect. I told you I only need a little of your time. I came here to give you some advice: watch how you say Caesar.” He winks at her. “There's a soldier boy outside who'd be very interested to hear you pronounce it. If I were you, I’d watch him closely.”

He moves towards her, and she instinctively cowers. Smirking, he nods at her and exits the tent.

_ACT II_

Only she remembers the name Azekah. The rest of the world knows her as the man called Kah. No one looks for a woman’s curves underneath a man’s armor. They take it for granted, never realizing how much attention she pays to the width of her stance and the angle of her shoulders. She even shaves her peach fuzz to give the appearance of a smooth jawline.

As she leans back in her chair, looking up at the flag of the Followers waving against the stars, she thinks about a lover she once took. Their last night together, before she was reassigned to a post in the Utah, she made a confession that Azekah still loses sleep over. She said she could pretend to be a man, too, if she was _ashamed_ to love women. But could she, truly? Could she in the daylight? Could she in the barracks full of sweating, grunting men in close proximity to her secret? Could she be happy, and for how long?

Azekah has always been the way she is, but she aches to be seen as a woman by another woman. Her body aches with her, a tight throbbing pain in her lower abdomen.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Frank leave Marah’s tent. Her head turns sharply. She watches him saunter across the courtyard and into the eastern guardhouse. She can’t see his face, but she'll never forget the man she saw while hiding under the floorboards.

She folds her cards and stands up. As soon as she moves, the pain in her lower abdomen almost brings her to her knees. She grits her teeth and makes her way to Marah’s tent.

Lowering her voice, she says, “Excuse me, I need -”

Marah stands in the corner, shaking. The peek of hair under her arms is damp with sweat when she lifts her calloused brown hands, covered with half-moon scars, to pull off her gecko pelt. She drapes it over a nearby chair with a heavy sigh. From behind, Azekah can see the tension of her neck and traces of her spine through her dirty cotton shirt.

“Can I, um...” Azekah swallows. She forgets how to talk around women she's attracted to. “Are you okay?”

Marah turns around slowly and gives a weary smile. “Of course I am. Can I help you, Kah?”

"I, uh, I need - do you have any broc flowers?”

“What for?”

“For... pain relief.”

“Broc flowers are only good for making healing poultices. Not much use on their own, unless you've got bad breath. I have med-x if you're injured. Are you?”

“Not exactly.”

“Be honest with me. I'm a healer. Let me help you.”

Azekah looks down at her dust-covered boots. “I just need it for - abdominal pain relief.”

“Xander root can help with indigestion.”

Azekah considers her options. She’s not going to linger at the fort after she deals with Frank. In fact, she'll avoid Freeside entirely after tonight. It couldn't hurt to tell one woman she'll never see again, even though they’ve been gazing at each other since Azekah was hired.

“I need it for menstrual cramps,” she says. “Please.”

Outside the tent, she can hear the sound of a table being flipped and cards scattering. There's shouting, quickly followed by laughter. Then silence closes like a hand around the tent.

“Thank you for trusting me,” Marah finally says. “I know it's... difficult, to admit things like this. Do you need sanitary napkins as well?”

“It would - that would be very -”

Their hands touch, briefly, as Marah gives her a brahmin-skin pouch.

“Stay safe,” she says, “and take care of yourself out there.”

Azekah glances in the pouch to see that it’s full of broc flowers and cloth rags. She whispers, “Thank you,” and then she runs.

_ACT III_

Frank may or may not be his name. Tomorrow, he'll walk out of this old fort and no one will follow. He was going to kill Kah himself before he discovered Marah, and now he thinks he’ll get them to kill each other before dawn. It's not that he's afraid to get his hands dirty. It's just that he's bored.

The door to the guardhouse opens, and Kah appears in a sliver of light.

“Come on in! Take a seat, good man,” he says, patting a crate besides him. “Close the door. Let’s have a chat. You, me, and God.”

In a brittle voice, Kah says, “Are you a religious man?”

“No, no, but I have a great respect for the those who are. It must be wonderful, that delusion.”

“You and I have very different ideas about respect.”

“You misunderstand me! I, myself, am severely delusional.”

“You...” Frank notices that Kah folds his arms lower on his chest than most men. “I know you were at Nelson.”

“No time for small talk? Cards on the table, then. Bold move.” He’s taller than Kah when he stands up. “You can’t prove that I was at Nelson. When’s the last time you reported for duty, soldier? For all the NCR knows, you’re a deserter who left your fellow men to die.”

“I saw you.” Kah shudders. “I... I saw you. _Eating them._ Legion, NCR... you were _eating them._ And you saw me, too. But you let me go. Why did you let me go?”

“Why did you hide, Kah? Why didn't you help them?”

“I couldn't - I was - ”

“You were a coward. You ran because you knew no one would believe you. One man took out Forlorn Hope and Nelson all by himself? They'd call you insane. So, you tried to forget. But, just my luck, we meet again! Well, actually, I followed you. Now, I know what you're thinking. You have to kill me or you won't be able to live with yourself, won't be able to sleep without revisiting that night, etcetera -”

Kah aims his gun at Frank, who leans forward so the barrel touches his forehead. He laughs, and Kah pulls the trigger. Nothing happens. Kah, expressionless, slowly lowers his gun.

“I emptied it while you slept, in case you were dumb enough to try and shoot me. Say, have you ever killed another human being with your hands? Because,” Frank continues nonchalantly, “it’s harder than you think.”

“You’re a monster.”

Frank paces the room and gestures wildly with his hands. “It’s easy to cut, with a horizontal motion. But to kill! To kill, with a vertical push, requires some effort on your part. All that muscle and fat. And bone. Once you hit bone, you know you’ve caused nerve damage. Don’t even think about hacking away at bone with your knife. You have to go right between the ribs, angle it precisely, try to puncture something soft and important. Eventually you have to pull your knife back out, and there’s - suction. Oh, and I’ll be fighting back the whole time.” He stops, takes a deep breath, and smiles. “Do you have the strength of will to kill me while looking me in the eyes?”

The warm smell of dust stirs in the room as the door swings open. Marah rushes in, like the children that the Legion send with grenades. A healer knows where to strike, and Frank is still smiling when she stabs him. Kah moves fast, pinning his arms behind his back in a firm grip.

Frank opens his mouth and blood comes out. Hubris has been his lover for so long, and now he cheats with death. Is the moon watching? Through the door, he can see her. She is. She was. She always will be.

“I'm never going back. Never,” Marah hisses. The charcoal memory of her mothers burns in her eyes. “I won’t let anyone make me feel powerless ever again.”

“So God is a woman,” says Kah.

Marah looks at him as if she just realized he’s there. “Kah, I can explain -”

“Azekah. My name isn’t Kah. It’s Azekah.”

**Author's Note:**

> The part about Azekah's ex mocking her gender expression is inspired by a passage from Leslie Feinberg's _Transgender Warriors,_ " 'No wonder you've passed as a man! This is such an anti-woman society,' a lesbian friend told me. To her, females passing as males are simply trying to escape women's oppression... My friend reminds me periodically that she too might have passed as a man a century ago... But could she pass as male on board ship, sleeping with and sharing common facilities with her fellow sailors for decades and not be discovered?"


End file.
